Looksmart Goes Vertical

Looksmart is turning itself into an About.com style portal, launching 161 vertical search sites in 12 categories including automotive, cities, food, health, home, sports and travel. Unlike About, Lookmart's vertical sites are not put together by human editors, but are assembled using technology.

"We decided if we could do this on a highly automated basis, we thought it would be a very good business," Looksmart CEO Dave Hills (also former COO and president of sales at About) told ClickZ's Pamela Parker.

The company continues to run its paid search and contextual advertising network.